“What did Mr. Bell hire you to do, exactly?”
“Stop whoever—or whatever—was stalking him and his family.”
“Did you?”
“Not yet.”
“How much did you charge him for all the garlic and crosses?”
“It’s all part of the service,” Sera said brazenly.
“Aye? I bet you don’t give him a rebate either.”
“Why should I? It worked, didn’t it?”
“How do you come to that conclusion?”
Sera smiled. “Have you seen any vampires in the house?”
She turned away from him, meaning to go into the larger room where the rest of the guests were giving their names to another policeman before being allowed to leave. But at the last minute, he grabbed her jacket sleeve.
“How do you sleep at night?” he snarled. “Ripping folk off when they’re down, playing on their grief like a vulture. You people make me sick.”
An automatic retort sprang to Sera’s lips, but she never made it. She waited silently, staring at his name badge—PC Alex McGowan—until he released her, then walked away in search of her henchmen. Right now, she made herself sick.
****
It was as they were being allowed to leave at last that Sera finally found her moment to ask Ferdy about his mysterious guest. He came up to her as she made her way to the front door with Jilly and earnestly asked her to visit him tomorrow morning.
“Of course,” Sera said at once. “Mr. Bell… Did you invite anyone called Blair to your party?”
“Jane Blair? Our neighbor? Retired school teacher from Mary Erskine’s?”
“Definitely not! Tall young man, dark or auburn hair, wearing a kilt? Might be an actor or another investigator? Like us?”
Ferdy shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells. And I didn’t hire another investigator. Why?”
“I’ll explain tomorrow,” she said hurriedly. Plainclothes police were arriving, and this time they’d brought all the suited-up forensics people she expected. She didn’t watch Taggart and CSI for nothing. They were piling into the house with their equipment and climbing the stairs after PC McGowan, who didn’t like Sera, and everyone else was waiting to speak to Ferdy.
It was pandemonium, and yet as Sera muttered sympathy and farewell and reached for the door handle, the policeman’s exclamation cut through the din like an axe.
“What! Where the hell’s the body?”
****
Sera’s Citroën screeched to a halt outside Jack’s modern block of luxury flats overlooking Haymarket, just as Jack inserted his key in the door. He glanced over his shoulder without surprise as Sera unwound the window. “Get in,” she called.
He didn’t even attempt to remonstrate, just took his key out of the door, walked back down the steps, and climbed into the backseat of Sera’s car.
“Nice one, Doc,” Jilly flung at him from the front passenger seat. “Your dead man walked.”
Jack sighed. “I know. But be fair. He fooled an actual doctor too. What is it with these people? What are he and old Ferdy up to?”
“Fuck knows,” said Jilly baldly.
In the rearview mirror, Sera saw Jack blink. He still hadn’t got used to the shock of such foul language emanating from the angelic-looking Jilly, whose halo of shining golden hair and frail, perfect beauty belied her much earthier character.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked.
“Tam’s,” Sera said.
“He won’t be in,” said Jilly, who was Tam’s cousin and knew his habits pretty well. “He’ll be in Spier’s Bar.”
Sera nodded and kept driving.
“Have they found him?” Jack asked.
“Jason? No. Not yet.”
“Wouldn’t we be better looking for him than for Tam?”
“I need Tam to tell me who this Blair character is. I found him wrestling with Tam in the trees, as if they were playing out some vampire scene of their own. Tam was cagey about the whole thing.”
“Probably thought it was funny till you showed up, then crapped his pants,” Jilly offered. “Tam likes a laugh, but he’s always been scared shitless of you.”
“Not as scared as he’s going to be,” Sera promised.
Jilly glanced at her. “It wasn’t his fault, you know.”
“No,” Sera agreed. “It was mine.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Sera. At least Jason isn’t dead.”
“Thing is,” Sera said, gazing fixedly at the headlights in front, “I’m pretty sure he is.”
Jilly’s fair head swiveled to stare. “You mean someone stole the body? Who the hell could have done that with the house full of police? Dead bodies are heavy. You can’t just stuff them under your coat and swan off with them unnoticed!”
“There were only two policemen when the body disappeared, and they were both downstairs taking names. I’ll bet there’s another staircase in that house and a back way out.”
“Who would do it, though?” Jack demanded.
“And why?” Jilly added.
“Blair. I don’t know why.” She glanced at Jilly, then at the rearview mirror to meet Jack’s gaze. “I fucked up, and all we can do now is get Ferdy his dead boy back and find his killer. If Blair didn’t do it, I’ll bet he knows the guy who did.” For instance, that shadowy woman in the torn, strappy dress who’d headed round the side of the house just before Blair did. Had he been with her? Were they accomplices?
Just as Jilly had prophesied, Tam was discovered propping up the bar at Spier’s. A rather unlikely and frequently out-of-work actor, Thomas Allen, aka Tam the Tank, specialized in heavy gangster roles. But apart from a slight shiftiness around the eyes, he didn’t look terribly villainous tonight.
He straightened as he caught sight of Sera’s entourage easing their way through the tables toward him. A brief expression like a hunted deer flitted across his lived-in face before it was replaced by a shrug of resignation.
“What are you having?” he asked, turning back toward the bar.
“Truth, Tam,” Sera said. “No twist. Who is Blair? Where does he live?”
Tam sighed. “I don’t know who he is. I never laid eyes on him before tonight. He just—appeared. While I was waiting for you.”
“Whose idea was it to pull the bite-mark stunt?”
“Nobody’s!” Clearly harassed by the three glaring faces around him, Tam laid down his pint. “Look, I don’t know why you keep going on about biting—”
He broke off as Sera reached up and pulled down the collar of his jacket. There was nothing more interesting than stubble on the left side of his neck. Annoyed by her faulty recollection, Sera yanked at the other side of his jacket, then frowned as she let her hand fall.
“See?” Tam exclaimed. He didn’t even sound smug.
“There’s nothing,” Jack observed. “Certainly nothing like those marks on Jason.”
“Was it makeup?” Sera hazarded.
“Oh, for the love of— No makeup. No bite.”
“You’re saying I was seeing things that weren’t there?” Sera asked with blatant disbelief.
“And hearing things,” Tam retorted. “The guy never even spoke to you.”
“What did he say to you?”
“The same! Nothing!”
Sera eased her hip onto a barstool to point out the obvious flaw in Tam’s story. “Then how,” she asked, “did he tell you his name?”
Tam stared back at her, clearly at a loss.
“Did he write it down in the dark? Tap it out in Morse code?”
“No!” Tam exclaimed. “That is… I don’t know!”
“Whose idea was the wrestling match? His or yours?”
“Wrestling?”
“You appeared to be squeezing the life out of each other. He was winning. You called him gay. Why was that? Tam, I don’t care if it was a lovers’ clinch or some practical joke to teach me a lesson. A man’s dead, and I need to know the truth of what the hell this guy was doing
there.”
“I don’t know, all right? I don’t know.” Tam turned away, picked up his beer, and drank.
Deliberately, Sera reached out and covered the hand he rested on his thigh. Tam’s whole body jerked. His glass rattled against his teeth and froze. Over it, his gaze locked with Sera’s in something akin to terror.
Right now, Sera knew how he felt. He was telling the truth, and that was scarier than anything. She let him go. “Sorry, Tam,” she muttered and swung round to leave, pushing straight for the door without even a good-bye.
****
Blair learned nothing by squatting on the roof of the vampiress’s shelter. She simply went to sleep. For a while, Blair amused himself by drinking from passersby until he felt full. After which, he settled back on the roof and smelled the blood of the human inside with a more detached interest. There was some connection between him and the psychic girl at the party, he’d swear it.
He mulled that over for a bit, getting somewhat lost in fantasies that involved drinking from the girl’s naked body while he made love to her. Nice idea, although he’d had the impression that she didn’t even believe in vampires, so he strongly doubted she was in league with any. Nor did she strike him as the sort of woman who would just stand there and let him drink her blood. Or fuck her. No doubt either would earn him a painful jab from one of her little pointy sticks.
So what was the connection between her and this other human? And what was the man in the house doing with vampires? Was he some kind of servant? He wished the vampiress would wake up and think, because all he’d got so far from either her or the human male was that they were pretty damned pleased with themselves. In fact, as the hours passed, he grew so bored that had it not been for the promise Ailis had forced from him forty years ago—to look out for the community in her absence—he’d have broken in and eaten them through sheer annoyance at having his time wasted.
He curled his lip at that thought. Time was something a vampire had in abundance. Overabundance. Although Ailis, damn her beautiful, manipulative soul, had prevented any curtailment of his. So now he equated his comfort with the good of the community and occasionally even managed to have fun doing it. Like encountering the psychic girl.
Which brought him back to the smug psychic man inside the house with the smug vampiress.
It was close to dawn before a possible reason for their self-satisfaction suggested itself.
Oh, fucking hell! I’ve been watching the wrong place. Springing to his feet, Blair began the race back to Davidson’s Mains and the Bells’ house.
He was in time to see Jason step out of the front door in the pale gray light of the predawn. Dressed in a smart three-piece suit, he climbed into the white sports car which was waiting only feet from the door and drove away at breakneck speed.
Blair scowled. Under my bloody nose, you bastards. This has got to stop.
Only he couldn’t afford the chase right now. The sun was on its way up, and he needed to be home.
****
When Jilly entered the welcoming front office of Serafina’s Psychic Investigations, she found Jack poring over telephone books, and Elspeth, the gray-haired receptionist, rummaging so dementedly through her desk drawers that she could spare no more than an inarticulate grunt in response to Jilly’s “Good morning.” She’d obviously lost her vodka again.
“Where’s Herself?” Jilly asked, throwing her jacket and laptop bag onto her own desk. She pointed at the door to the inner office, where clients could be private. “In there?”
“Haven’t seen her,” Jack said in a depressed tone of voice. “I don’t think she’s come down yet.”
Elspeth shut the drawer. “We need milk.”
Milk and vodka. Jilly had no idea why Sera insisted on employing Elspeth, unless it was so she could pinch her alcohol supply late at night.
“And then,” Elspeth said, struggling into her coat while Jilly set her laptop up on the desk, “I’ll make coffee.”
“Great. I could murder a cup.” Jilly slid into her chair and glanced at Jack. “You looking for Blairs?”
Jack shoved his phonebook across the desk. “Hundreds of them. And that’s only if Blair’s the surname. I’ve tried all the likely local agencies too—no actors or magicians or ventriloquists on their books matching our man’s description.”
“You want to try social networking sites.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t even know if he’s based in Scotland, let alone Edinburgh. Sera said he sounded Scottish, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t actually know the guy exists.”
“Oh, he exists,” Jilly argued. “Seems to be the one thing Sera and Tam agree on.”
Jack dragged one hand through his unruly, curly brown hair. “What is all this neck-biting stuff? Is someone taking the mick out of Ferdy?”
“You mean apart from us?”
Jack scratched his chin. “What if Jason was taking the mick out of us in retaliation? Because he didn’t like us making a fool of his father?”
Jilly raised one eyebrow at him. “You’re the one who gave him mouth-to-mouth and claimed he was dead.”
“Shit, Jilly, you saw him! All white and shrunken, exactly as if someone had let all the blood out of him.”
Jilly sat back in her chair, savoring the moment. “You’re suggesting a vampire really did bite him?”
To her surprise, Jack’s gaze didn’t falter. “I’m saying, what’s Sera’s problem with this? Why doesn’t she believe in vampires when…”
“When she believes in all the other mumbo jumbo?”
“Doesn’t she?”
Unsure what response to make, Jilly played for time. “Why ask me?”
“You’ve known her longer than I have. I realize she takes the piss, puts on shows, but sometimes…”
“What?”
“You know,” Jack said darkly.
Jilly, who’d been acquainted with Sera since they were outsiders together at school, had long ago accepted the strange gifts of her friend and respected absolutely Sera’s right to pretend charlatanism if she chose. It was Sera’s place, not Jilly’s, to tell Jack as little or as much as she saw fit. Besides, Sera’s real problem right now was not so much with the existence of vampires as with the possible death of Jason Bell under her nose, which was setting off all sorts of blame issues that Jilly really didn’t want her to go through again.
So she merely smirked at Jack as she stood up. “You believe in the powers of our glorious leader. I’m going to tell her.”
“No, you’re not,” Jack disputed as she crossed to the inner office.
“Actually,” said Jilly, opening the door and stepping inside, “I am.”
The office was indeed empty and the door in the side wall which led to Sera’s flat carelessly left unlocked. Jilly knocked and barged in.
“Sera, it’s me!” she called as she ran up the stairs.
Sera sat on her living room floor in the same jeans and T-shirt she’d worn last night, looking white and exhausted, her short, jet-black hair sticking up like spikes. The skin seemed to be stretched so tightly across the fine bones of her face that her skull looked in danger of bursting through. Dark shadows lurked around her startlingly bright blue eyes.
Although she was surrounded by the mess of life—books and coffee cups scattered across the floor and coffee table; a pair of boots in a heap in the corner where they’d obviously been flung; two jackets and a sweater over the back of the sofa, and a half-full vodka bottle on the chair—the space immediately in front of her was clear, apart from one lonely cufflink. A square of jet set in gold, it looked vaguely familiar.
“Is that Jason’s?”
Sera nodded.
“Does Ferdy know you’ve got it?”
“Nope. Nor do the police.”
Jilly picked up the vodka and sat in the chair, dangling the bottle between her legs. “Get much?” she asked casually.
“Not a bloody thing.”
“Maybe he’s just not dead.�
��
“Or maybe he hasn’t learned yet that he can talk to me. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
Jilly shrugged. “I’d say his choice of conversational partners in this life would be somewhat limited. If he was dead.”
“He’s dead,” Sera insisted. She glanced up, and Jilly felt a fresh stab of anxiety for her friend. “There was no life in him in the maze. I’d have sensed it.”
Sera’s pallor, the uncharacteristic tightness around her lips, could be explained by tiredness, but it didn’t account for the stricken, almost dead look behind her eyes. Jilly had seen that look only once before when Mattie, the only foster mother Sera had ever cared for, had died of a sudden, massive stroke. Sera, alone in the house with Mattie at the time, had found the body. At the age of fourteen, she already talked to the dead, but Mattie had never spoken to Sera. Sera had taken that as blame, and Jilly could see she was interpreting Jason’s silence in the same way.
Jilly’s throat closed up. Her heart ached for her friend, but it was a wound that was never prodded between them because it had already come close to ending their friendship. They’d known each other since childhood, two outsiders finding strength in alliance.
If Jilly’s problem had been too much family, Sera’s had been too little. Kicked from foster family to foster family via several stints in children’s homes, Sera had always come up fighting, physically and mentally. In all the years of Jilly’s acquaintance with her, despite the cruelty of other children, the abuse and neglect of adults, and the dreadful loneliness she must have suffered, Serafina had only ever shed tears for Mattie. And Jilly had seen, which had made her unbearable to Sera. Jilly had saved things at the time only by pretending not to notice and never, ever referring to it.
Although they were adults now, Jilly still shied away from the subject, even from disparaging whatever comparisons Sera had got into her head between Mattie’s death and Jason Bell’s. Pity and understanding would solve nothing for Sera.
So Jilly just said in a neutral tone of voice, “Maybe you’re right. Have you been to bed?”
“I fell asleep on the floor,” Sera said vaguely. “What time is it? Are you in early, or am I late?”
“Guess.”
To her relief, a faint smile curved Sera’s tired lips. “I’d better shower and change if I’m going to see Ferdy.”
Serafina and the Silent Vampire Page 3
